Two of six enormous steel drums built for Chevron's El Segundo oil refinery made their way Monday to Redondo Beach, beginning the first leg of a carefully planned journey along the South Bay coastline.

The coke drums - which measure 100 feet long and 28 feet across - reached the mouth of King Harbor at 6:15 a.m., having traveled by barge from the Port of Los Angeles. Weather permitting, their journey should wrap up early Thursday, when the steel drums are expected to pass through the refinery's Rosecrans Avenue entrance.

Chevron officials reported few glitches Monday, saying the move out of the port was on schedule, and that the prep work required to shift the hefty drums from the barge to Marina Way - a King Harbor mole road - went as planned. | PHOTOS: On the move at night

That part of the move required special self-propelled modular transporters - the kind of equipment that carried the space shuttle Endeavour along Los Angeles surface streets - to slowly roll the 500,000-pound drums across a temporary bridge and onto the land side.

Advertisement

The only delay was caused by a young sea lion that decided to hang out in roughly the same spot where the barge was to dock, requiring a call to marine animal rescuers, Chevron officials said.

"Everything went really smoothly coming up from L.A.," said spokesman Rod Spackman, as he waited under gray skies at the tip of Marina Way, watching workers carefully guide four red transporters beneath the bellies of the two gray drums, which were resting atop small braces on the barge.

A crowd of boaters, company representatives, residents and city leaders had gathered by midmorning and lingered until after lunch, marveling at the planning and engineering required to move such large, heavy pieces of equipment. The drums will be used in the oil refinery's coker unit.

After a few hours of prep work, the transporters finally began inching forward simultaneously just before 1 p.m.

"We'll be comfortably ready to go tonight," Spackman said.

Chevron expected that the transporters would be on the move again by about 10 p.m. Monday, this time heading down Marina Way and Harbor Drive to a staging area at Herondo Street and Pacific Coast Highway, near the King Harbor entry sign.

There, the drums will be placed onto different vehicles that meet California Department of Transportation standards for the planned journey up Pacific Coast Highway and Sepulveda Boulevard toward the refinery property in El Segundo. That trip - scheduled to start late Wednesday - will trigger rolling road closures from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

But the overnight journey Wednesday depends partly on weather, which means a rainy forecast could trigger delays; Chevron spokesman Jeff Wilson said Caltrans requires at least 1,000-foot visibility for the move to occur, and no greater than a 30 percent chance of rain. (Forecasters this week are anticipating showers late Tuesday and into early Wednesday).

Once the first two coke drums reach the refinery, Chevron expects to repeat the same routine with the remaining four structures during the weeks of Feb. 25 and March 4. Overnight road closures are planned again on Feb. 27 and March 6.

While watching coke drums pass through the South Bay might not attract the same kind of attention as the space shuttle did when it left Los Angeles International Airport for the California Science Center, there are those who probably won't want to miss it. At least 50 people lingered at a time Monday morning, with newcomers walking up to check out the drums just as fast as others got photos and walked away.

Manufactured in Spain, the drums will eventually become part of Chevron's coker, a thermal cracking unit at the refinery that heats the heaviest components of crude to a high temperature, causing it to break down into lighter materials such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. They will replace models that date to the 1960s.

Not long after the drums arrived, Redondo Beach resident Paul Hayashi, a banker who was off work for the Presidents Day holiday, arrived with his camera in hand.

"It's an engineering feat," he said of the meticulously planned move. "I'm just interested. I missed the shuttle transport, so I wanted to see this."

So did city residents Sharon and Wayne Chenard, who routinely walk the waterfront for exercise. They stood in a patch of ice plant, their eyes fixed on the water.